Entertainment

Sleater-Kinney talks fury and friendship at New Yorker Festival

Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss laughed off the idea of Sleater-Kinney being the best rock band in the world at The New Yorker festival on Saturday, but to many — including most occupants of the room — it's true. And the band kind of knows it, too.

“When we’re on stage playing, I feel like we’re the best band in the world,” Weiss told New Yorker writer Dana Goodyear, who was moderating the panel. It helps when your bandmates are your favorite musicians.

“The beautiful parts were edged in disgrace and disgust, it bordered right on ugly the whole time," Brownstein writes of the first time she heard Tucker's voice in Hunger Made Me a Modern Girl, which is dedicated to Tucker and Weiss.

Weiss had a similar visceral reaction to her first exposure to Tucker and Brownstein's music, “A lot of different things were firing in me when I heard that.”

The concept of fandom and idolization even crept into their lyrics in "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" from 1996's Call the Doctor.

“I think we were playing with those ideas, I think it was a little bit cheeky. We were playing with all these archetypes, especially these male archetypes of rockstars," said Brownstein. "Almost like a child going into a closet and putting on these fancy clothes.”

When they played their first tour after their hiatus in early 2015, they updated the lyrics, singing, "I wanna be your Kim Gordon" in place of "I wanna be your Thurston Moore," retooling their Sonic Youth name check.

The band recalled getting a taste of rock superstardom when they opened for Pearl Jam in 2003, playing arenas full of largely indifferent audiences, who were more interested in the concession stands than their sets. “Our one goal was to watch somebody put down their hot dog," joked Brownstein.

They used the opportunity to experiment on stage, deconstructing their discography as they went along. These live experiments went on to inform their furious 2005 album The Woods.

And people did put down their hot dogs, including two audience members — in enviable Janet Fucking Weiss T-shirts no less — at The New Yorker Festival, who shared during the audience Q&A that Sleater-Kinney became their favorite band after hearing them the first time at one of the Pearl Jam shows.

Rage seeps into their other creative projects, including Brownstein's Portlandia. Her favorite characters on the show are Toni from the feminist bookstore, “I love her sensibility, l love her comfortable clothes. I like her quiet anger,” and Kath for her “loud anger.”

“We leave it all up on stage," said Brownstein. "We play every show like it’s our last show."

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